Something tricky...

My assignment this week was a tough one for me.  It was something that I was unfamiliar with and therefore it has been quite a challenge for me.  Unlike the previous 2 assignments where we only had to submit 3 photos, this week we have to submit 12, but 9 of those are part of a sequence, so that was easier to choose.

Our lecture last week was all about motion and depth of field.  For motion, the challenge was to either slow the shutter down, where the back ground is blurred and the subject sharp, or the subject blurred and the background blurred.  To keep your subject focused and your background blurred, we attempted panning, where you move your camera with the subject - it's something I still can't get right and will continue to practise this.  

As far as depth of field goes, that's something that I understand and I enjoy messing around with it a bit.  Anyway, here are the pictures I've chosen as my favourites to print for tonight's class.  Oh, they're going up on a projector, so no pressure on quality... eeek...

I like the first picture above very much, I love how the sea looks so rough and wild and how Table Mountain is already basking in sunlight.  I think it might be a little dark though.

Same with the one below...

 This one for me has better light in is, but I'm not so sure that I like the layout...

 I quite like this one, what do you think?

 I thought bugs would be a good subject for my motion pictures too, so Jake and I headed off to Butterfly World for a little outing.  Motion...

 Very slight motion...

 Frozen motion...

 This guy seemed to be doing some kind of a dance for his dying buddy.  We saw him on our way out, so I felt really lucky to get these...

 Next up was depth of field.  Jake bought himself a pomegranate and it was just too pretty not to photograph...

 Playing with depth of field in the garden...

 More depth of field, this time with a bee in focus...

 I kept hoping he'd fly off and I'd get one of him flying from flower to flower, but like butterflies, bees are fast little blighters...

 This isn't really in sharp focus, but I managed to snap a gnat in the shot with the bee, which was kinda cool...

 Our main depth of field assignment was to find 3 objects of similar size and stagger them behind one another, then get the focus on to each subject at a time, changing the aperture as we went along.  It means 3 photos at 3 apertures each, 9 photos in total...

 Pretty flowers picked from the garden...

 I get this, I understand it...

Anyway, I have tons of photos of things that we've been up to as well, so I promise that sometime during the week, I'll have a post for you on something other than my course.

Sending love,

Sue XXX